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East Norway Lake Lutheran Church
is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year.
The congregation officially marked the milestone Sept. 21, both during morning worship and with an afternoon program and pie and ice cream social.
Pastor Shari Routh serves the Norway Lake Parish that includes the East Norway Lake and First Lutheran of Norway Lake churches.
According to the bulletin for the program, three guest pastors also participated alongside Routh — Pastor Valerie Strand Patterson and the Rev. Dr. Erick Thompson, both of whom grew up in the church, and the Rev. Seyward Ask, who a year ago installed Pastor Routh in the parish.
Patterson leads a church in Plymouth. Thompson is an adjunct professor of Concordia College in Moorhead and an assistant pastor for a West Fargo, North Dakota, church.
Ask lives in Willmar and serves as a Southwestern Minnesota Synod minister for equipping congregation leaders, rostered ministers, youth and families.
While the church was built on the present A. Hedin site in 1875 under a $450 contract, the historical record of what became the East Norway Lake Lutheran Church goes back to the first settler in 1859, according to the church history included in the bulletin for the Sept. 21 worship service and afternoon program.
A pastor began serving that area starting in 1861, and a log church was first constructed in 1868 at Ole Knudson’s property.
In 1876, one year after the church was constructed, a resolution was passed to divide the growing parish into two congregations called East Norway Lake and West Norway Lake.
There were other changes in the parish population over the years, according to the history in the bulletin. Among the more significant was the establishment in 1964 of a new two-point parish with First Lutheran. It was also 1964 when women were given the right to vote at congregational meetings.
The Norway Lake Lutheran Parish, which became part of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America in 1987, observed its 50th anniversary in 2014. A Norway Lake Lutheran Parish Agreement was adopted in 2024 with First Lutheran Church of Norway Lake.
Other notable early milestones include the transition from Norwegian to English. In 1930, it was decided to have every fourth service in English. The first time the sermon was preached in English and Norwegian was by Pastor. H.E. Baalson in 1932, and the secretary’s minutes were written in Norwegian until 1937.
The history of the accomplishments of the women of the church is long. What was then called the Ladies Aid celebrated its 40th anniversary in 1927.
A long list of improvements to the church building were funded by the women of the church, under a few different names over the years. Stained glass windows were purchased for $370 in 1943, according to the history outlined in the bulletin. The women of the church put money toward a furnace fund and well and water system in the 1960s.
Throughout the entire history of the parish, the women funded many of the needs — from painting to floor and window coverings, and from dinnerware to tables, chairs and even kitchen appliances.
Over the course of 150 years, the list of building maintenance and improvement projects undertaken by the congregation is long. A basement and wood-coal furnace were added in 1925 and electric lights in 1930. Several improvements were completed in the late 1950s and the 1960s: new pews, altar, pulpit, altar rail, lectern, carpet and furnace among them, plus a new well, paved parking lot, a new electronic organ and washrooms.
The centennial was marked in 1975, and there was a new front entrance built.
More improvements were undertaken in the 1980s: exterior painting and siding on the bell tower; ceiling fans in the sanctuary, classrooms for the Sunday school area, padding on the pews and a hearing aid system among them.
More work in the 1990s included refurbishing the sanctuary, siding and roofing. In addition to lighting and flooring projects in the past couple years, the largest recent project was replacing the roof on the sanctuary and the fellowship hall in 2023.